The U.S. dental restoration industry (crowns, bridges, partial and full dentures) is a very large market, currently generating more than $7 billion in revenue (over $20 billion worldwide). Despite its large size, the design and production of dental restorations is characterized mainly by low-tech, manual processes performed on a small scale by geographically dispersed and fragmented labs.
Traditional dental laboratory methods are labor-intensive, generations old, and require a great deal of manual dexterity and, for many assignments, an artistic skill. The traditional process by which a crown or bridge is fabricated (i.e., create wax replica, invest wax in stone, melt out wax, replace with molten metal, remove from stone, add porcelain or other materials) was first developed by the Egyptians over 3,000 years ago. Many labs have only very basic capital equipment, relying only on simple mixers, ovens and their years of training and skill in the design of dental restorations.
A number of digital dentistry manufacturers have introduced systems to help laboratories design restorations in a digital context in the hope of producing highly accurate restorations more rapidly and efficiently, improving the lab throughput, profitability and quality. Many vendors are vying for market share, but none of the currently available systems offer a solution that is easily adopted by dental lab technicians. Penetration is low, with the number of restorations made digitally still less than 10% of the total.
Some of the key hurdles to widespread adoption of digitized solutions in restorative dentistry are the difficulty that most technicians experience in utilizing traditional computer interfaces for mechanical design, and the lack of intuitive tools to modify digital models of restorations in ways that allow a technician to draw on their experience and expertise. The current industry offerings require technicians to develop proficiency in abstraction laden, complex design programs far different from their experience and training. Furthermore, these systems are ill-equipped to deal with the highly organic nature of designing dental prosthetics.
There is a need for a transparent, easy to use, and easy to learn digital dentistry system that dental professionals will embrace. The digital dentistry system must be able to generate highly organic shapes and allow the users to easily and intuitively modify these shapes, just like they do by hand on a wax model.